A segment of the communications services marketplace has developed around providing telecommunication services to certain facilities where individuals have restricted or controlled access to the telecommunication network. Accordingly, a telecommunications company may deploy a call processing system providing calling services to an inmate facility (e.g., jail, prison, penitentiary, stockade, etcetera) or other controlled environment facility (e.g., camp, nursing home, school, hospital, etcetera), wherein use of the telecommunications network by residents of the controlled environment facility is tightly controlled by the call processing system. For example, calling services from an inmate facility may comprise a prisoner privilege which is closely regulated and monitored, such as to prevent harassing phone calls, fraud, and the commission of crimes. Accordingly, telecommunications providers providing controlled environment facility calling services may be required to provide various call control and/or monitoring features, such as calling party authorization, called party authorization, call forwarding detection, three-way call detection, call recording, word searching within the conversation, etcetera.
Such call control and monitoring features typically involve complex systems which are configured for a particular environment. Depending upon the particular carrier providing the telecommunications links, the particular communications utilized, etcetera, various parameters and other aspects of call control and monitoring features will often be adjusted to provide desired operation. For example, three-way call detection algorithms often require adjustment of line “silence” thresholds and/or hook flash algorithms in order to operate properly with respect to any particular carrier and environment (e.g., distance from central office, type of trunk lines used, physical interface employed, etcetera). Moreover, wholly different three-way call detection algorithms may be required as between situations where a carrier employing voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and a carrier employing more traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) links.
In addition to the need to deploy and configure such complex systems for call control and monitoring, telecommunications companies providing communications services to controlled environment facilities have significant overhead in maintaining not only the call control and monitoring systems but also data associated with the call processing system. For example, call recordings must typically not only be warehoused, but they must be accurately cataloged and secured in order to preserve their integrity for use in investigative or legal proceedings. Moreover, information such as inmate identification and rights, allowed numbers, disallowed numbers, etcetera must be constantly updated to ensure proper operation of the call processing system. In many controlled environment facilities, the call processing system itself, along with its call control and monitoring aspects, must be constantly refined in order to prevent continuous attempts by users to defeat the controls or to commit fraud.
Because of the burdensome infrastructure, management, and maintenance requirements associated with providing telecommunications services with respect to controlled environment facilities, a telecommunications company providing the aforementioned call processing system with respect to a particular facility has traditionally been provided a long term contract to provide the telecommunications services for that controlled environment facility. This has meant that the telecommunications company has been allowed to provide access only to a carrier of the telecommunications company's choice (e.g., the telecommunications company itself serves as the telecommunications carrier or the telecommunications company leases lines from a carrier for use in providing the services). Through controlling access to a selected carrier, the telecommunications company providing the calling services to the controlled environment facility is able to recover the costs of the infrastructure, management, and maintenance required in providing the services through toll or per-call charges which are somewhat increased over charges otherwise available on the open market.
Although telecommunications companies providing communications services to controlled environment facilities, wherein the above described call control and monitoring are employed, have themselves occasionally utilized two carriers to provide the calling services, they have heretofore not provided any means by which a user (whether a calling party or a called party) may select a particular carrier for communications services. That is, a telecommunications company may lease lines from two carriers in order to provide the telecommunications company itself an ability to complete calls using an appropriate one of the carriers. However, the number of such carriers used by a telecommunications company providing communication services to a controlled environment facility has been limited to a very few because, in the current model wherein the telecommunications company is the entity ultimately responsible for paying for the call, the telecommunications company must have agreements in place a priori with the carrier. Moreover, it is difficult to manage multiple carriers, such as to constantly ensure that all carriers are operating, that the carriers that are operating have enough capacity at any particular time to carry calls, etcetera.
Selection between the carriers by the telecommunications company between two carriers has been provided in only very limited situations. For example, a telecommunications company may, for a particular call, select between two carriers from which the telecommunications company has already leased lines based upon which carrier provides the lowest cost for carrying the call provided that the appropriate call control and monitoring systems needed for the call are operable with respect to the selected carrier.